During one of their dinner conversations, a husband-wife cancer research team asked their eight-year-old daughter how she would cure cancer.
The girl, Camilla Lisanti suggested using antibiotics. “Like when I have a sore throat,” she said.
Her parents, Michael Lisanti and Federica Sotgia were skeptical at first but tested out her theory in their Manchester University lab, where they were shocked to discover that several cheap and widely-used antibiotics killed the most dangerous cancer cells.
The antibiotics fought seven of the most common cancers – including breast, prostate, lung and hard-to-treat brain tumors.
It costs as little as USD $9 a day, while, some of the latest cancer drugs cost several hundred dollars a day.
Cancer charities said the research shows that the answers to some of the biggest questions are right in front of our eyes.
Camilla’s parents showed that cancer stem cells – the deadly ‘mother cells’ that give birth to tumors, keep them alive and ease their spread around the body – have particularly high numbers of mitochondria, the tiny engine rooms that supply them with energy, while some antibiotics stop the cell from making mitochondria.
They also showed that four common antibiotics killed these stem cells in samples taken from breast, prostate, lung, ovarian, pancreatic, skin and brain cancers.
Significantly, healthy cells were not harmed.
The experiments on cells in a dish suggest that antibiotics could be used to stop cancer in its tracks and prevent it from spreading through the body – the main way it kills.